Steven M. Dettelbach: Purging voting rolls undermines democracy

Wednesday

Jan 10, 2018 at 12:01 AMJan 10, 2018 at 6:12 AM

Today, a lawyer representing the Ohio attorney general will stand before the U.S. Supreme Court and ask it to answer the following question: How many Ohio voters who lawfully registered can the state remove from its rolls without actually violating the law? Of all the reasons for my state to go before the high court, this is one of the most misguided.

The appeal is aimed at gaining political advantage for candidates in 2018 and 2020, not protecting the rights of Ohio voters. I hope the Supreme Court recognizes as much.

The appeal rests on shaky legal ground. The Cincinnati-based 6th Circuit Court of Appeals realized that, finding that from 2011 to 2016, the Ohio secretary of state purged 1.2 million people who had lawfully registered as Ohio voters from the rolls, largely for not voting often enough. Using what’s known as “Ohio’s Supplemental Process,” the secretary of state purged these Ohio voters from the rolls. Many did not find out what the state had done until they showed up to vote — and were told “no.”

Those actions violated the National Voter Registration Act, said the court, which specifically says that voters cannot be removed from election rolls “by reason of the person’s failure to vote.” The nonpartisan League of Women Voters has called Ohio's purge the most “ham-handed and draconian” process of its kind in the nation.

The Ohio attorney general disputes all this, portraying the purge as little more than good housekeeping aimed to eliminate voters who have died or left the state. That position is deeply disingenuous. Particularly troubling and telling is that the state purged duly registered voters who have not moved and those who moved a few miles to the next county over, even though Ohio law allows their votes to be counted.

The Ohio attorney general’s most important job is to protect the rights of every citizen. So why is that office going to the highest court in the land to explore the outer limits of excluding Ohioans from voting? Sadly, there is just one reason: politics.

A Reuters analysis uncovered that in Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, voters in Democratic-leaning neighborhoods were twice as likely to be purged as those in Republican-leaning ones. That’s right — twice as likely.

Ohio’s purge is not about properly cleaning up the voter rolls, which is allowed. It’s about whether elected officials can rig the political system to get a partisan edge. It’s part of the same movement that created Ohio’s tortured congressional map and it comes from exactly the same people — national funders and outside political groups pushing all the limits in a state that has a pivotal role in presidential elections.

Playing politics with voting rights is short-sighted and plain wrong. Voting rights should not be a partisan issue. Electoral wins for both parties should be about winning the war of ideas, not about winnowing the voter rolls. After all, it’s the voters who are supposed to pick their elected officials, not the other way around, right?

Even worse, the purge unfairly affects certain Ohio citizens. It hurts military-service men and women who are away from their homes, people with disabilities, and the elderly. That’s why the veterans advocacy group Vote Vets opposes the purge, saying it operates as a “near impenetrable barrier to voting for active-duty service members and veterans.” Other advocacy groups, including Disability Rights Ohio and the AARP, oppose Ohio’s purge for similar reasons.

This is not the Ohio I know. We traditionally reject extreme politics and gamesmanship. And when Ohio’s elected leaders in either party have forgotten that fact, Ohio voters have pointedly reminded them.

But what do we do when the partisanship at issue aims to disenfranchise thousands of those same voters? That is what is so insidious about Ohio's purge. It seeks to undermine the very democratic process that holds government in check.

At times like these we need a truly independent judicial branch. We need the court to see the damage this type of corrosive action can cause, and step in to protect our democracy. If they don’t, it will again be up to Ohio’s voters to deliver that message — at least those of us who are still left on the rolls.

Steven M. Dettelbach is former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio and a candidate for Ohio attorney general.

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